


Grief

by magos186



Series: The Magicians episode tag one-shots [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Episode: s03e07 Poached Eggs, Episode: s03e08 Six Short Stories About Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 12:26:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magos186/pseuds/magos186
Summary: Fen gets to Earth the night before the others plan to go to the Underworld and finds out a few things she never thought could be true.





	Grief

Quentin sat in his room, staring at the pages of the book in front of him and trying not to freak out about the upcoming mission. Earlier that day they got Katie out of the hospital and she got Harriet and Victoria on board. They had maneuvered all the pieces they could into place, now all they needed to do was break into a super secure location with unknown defenses. When Poppy entered his room, all of his worries came pouring out. She stood there calmly, interrupting when she could. Finally she had enough and just kissed him. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked indignantly. 

**_“Short circuiting your panic attack. It’s getting tiresome,” _** Poppy said simply, as if that was enough of an explanation. She truly was crazy if she thought Quentin wanted to sleep with her after everything she’d done. She was about to kiss him again when he heard a crash downstairs. “Just ignore it. Someone probably dropped something,” she said, leaning in again. 

“They might need help,” he mumbled as he quickly got himself out of her clutches and out of the room. Once he got to the bottom of the stairs, he let out a sigh of relief. 

“Hi,” Fen said, looking up from the floor outside the clock.

“Are you alright?”

“The door was stuck. Can I get a drink?”

The two sat on the couch, Fen about halfway through a bottle of red wine while Quentin nursed his first glass. Neither had said anything since the first drink was poured, but Fen finally seemed to get the nerve. “Fray isn’t my daughter,” she said softly. “The Fairy Queen finally told us the truth. My daughter died in childbirth.”

“Fen, I’m so sorry,” Quentin replied, taking her hand in his. He wanted to hug her, but he wasn’t sure they were good enough friends for that yet. 

“I wanted to believe that Fray was ours you know? If I could just will it hard enough, we’d be a family. I know that Eliot never wanted the baby, but I –”

“That’s not true. He did want her.”

“Oh please,” Fen scoffed. “You don’t need to lie for him. He had no reaction when that bitch admitted the truth. He doesn’t care she’s gone.”

“Wait here for a minute,” Quentin ordered before leaving her alone to run upstairs. When he returned, he was wearing a hoodie and carrying his messenger bag and an extra hoodie, which he handed to her. She put it on while he went to the kitchen to stock his bag with flashlights, bottles of water and several bags of snacks. He also snagged a full bottle of Vanilla Stolichnaya Vodka from the liquor cabinet. “I need to show you something,” He said as he held his hand before her. “Will you come with me?”

“Where are we going?” Fen asked as she took his hand. He led her to the clock and opened the door. “No, I just left there. I can’t go back, not right now,” she protested. 

“Fen, I promise this will help you understand. Please trust me,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. “We’re not going to the castle or anywhere near it.” He stared her down for another few minutes before she agreed.

When they came out of the portal, dawn was breaking. “It’s a bit of a walk. Let me know if you need to take a break at all. I’ll tell you a story on the way,” Quentin offered as he began to walk, his hand still firm in hers. He took a deep breath before he spoke again. He didn’t want to think of the mosaic, didn’t want to admitted that those fifty years had happened…not after his heart had been broken. But this woman, the wife of the man he loved, was suffering and she needed to know the whole story. Maybe this would be a healing experience for them both.

“While you were here exploring the city with Todd and Fray,” he started, “Eliot and I went looking for the time key, although we didn’t know that was its power at the time. All we knew was that it was located at the mosaic and that to get the key, you had to solve the puzzle. We went through the portal and wound up in Fillory in the past, probably a hundred years before you were born. There was a small cabin there that we turned into a home. Fifty years we knelt before that gods forsaken puzzle, creating design after design, trying to show the ‘beauty of all life.’ It was…so damn frustrating. But things were okay because I had my best friend with me. After a few years, I started dating a local girl who delivered fruit. Eventually we got married and she got pregnant. Eliot kind of freaked out. Not as bad as he did when he found out you were. He was older, wiser, but by then I knew him well enough to tell. I could understand I guess. I know he had it rough growing up, that his father treated him horribly. I know he never wanted to have his own kids, afraid that he’d turn into his old man. 

“I gave him his space. I didn’t pressure him to talk about it. I mean, you can’t really force him to do much of anything if he doesn’t want to. The day Teddy was born, I put him in Eliot’s arms and told him that he was just as much his son as he was mine. The first time Teddy called him Papa, he basically ran out of the house. I found him later, a few yards from the cabin. He was sitting in a clearing crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he said that it finally hit him.”

“What finally hit him?” Fen asked softly, almost afraid of his answer.

“That your baby was gone. That he’d never get to hear his own daughter call him Daddy. That he’d never get to see her first steps or hear her first words. He’d never see her grow up. He said that he was an idiot about the whole pregnancy. He said that he could only see his own fear. When my son called him Papa, he realized just how much he wanted to experience that with you and your own daughter. He grieved for her then.”

Neither one said anything after that, just walked on in silence. They took a break after a couple hours to have something to eat and some water. Once they rested, they continued on to their destination. It was another couple of hours before they arrived. When they did, Quentin was shocked to find it so well preserved. The exterior furniture was missing, but aside from that it looked just like it had the last time he’d seen it. The design on the mosaic was the very first one he and Eliot had created together. On the bottom row of tiles someone had engraved the words “Solved by ECW & QCW.”

“This is where you lived?” Fen asked skeptically. “With _Eliot_?” Quentin laughed. 

“I know, but he grew to love it here. Come on,” he said, taking her hand once more. “We’re almost there.”  
He led her around the back of the house, keeping far enough away from the three graves that she would not notice them. A few yards away, they came upon six blue jacaranda trees spread in a circle. In the center of the circle stood a bush of beautiful lavender roses. “They’re called Angel Face Roses. On Earth, angels are believed to be agents of God. There are also guardian angels, spirits that watch over us. This is where I found him mourning that day, but back then it was an empty field. It took him a long time to finally come to terms with the loss of your daughter. When he did, he used his magic to build this for her,” Quentin explained as he pulled her with him to the tree north of the rosebush. On the bark of the tree, an angel was carved and beneath it were the words “Cora Fen Waugh. Lost but never forgotten and always loved.”

Fen fell to her knees in front of it as she began to sob.


End file.
